Ghost Holes of Topanga

There are many reasons for the California Department of Parks and Recreation to post signs throughout the public lands forbidding human presence after sundown. Cougars, mountain lions, puma and panthers would be four good reasons if they weren’t only one reason. Then, too, there are your various banditos, badgers and bear. Also nightsnakes and lepers!

But the most pressing reason for mortals to vacate the mountains before nightfall are… well, you see them pictured above: the Ghost Holes of Topanga.

By day these eerie, whispering concavities provide shelter for the timid spirits that haunt the area, but with the lengthening of the shadows, one by one the ghosts emerge. It is politic to yield the darkening slopes to them. No, they are not malevolent, these shades of ancient peoples who once dwelt upon these rugged hills — indeed, the spectres are friendly and long for… contact with the yet-living — but the effect on the human mind by the… wyrd is wholly unpredictable — and rarely good. There have been many unfortunate… incidents where the prohibition against night-walking in the peaks has gone unheeded. Yes, it is best to leave them to their peace, these numinous dwellers in the Ghost Holes of Topanga.